Mohammed Ali Hassan al-Moayad

Mohammed Ali Hassan al-Moayad was a Yemeni imam and the former spiritual adviser of Osama bin Laden. He was involved in sending millions of dollars to finance the Hamas terrorist group in Palestine, and he was in US custody from 2003 to 2008 before being deported to Yemen, where he was hailed as a hero.

Biography
Mohammed Ali Hassan Al-Moayad was born in South Yemen to a Sunni Muslim Arab family, and he became an imam, a Muslim cleric. al-Moayad traveled to Afghanistan during the Soviet-Afghan War and became the spiritual adviser of Mujahideen fighter Osama bin Laden while thee, although this relationship ended after the war's end, and Osama issued a fatwa calling for his death after al-Moayad criticized him. He went on to become the imam of the main mosque in Sana'a, and he also joined the Muslim Brotherhood-affiliated al-Islah Salafist party of Yemeni politics. al-Moayad made large contributions of money to Hamas during the Second Intifada, assisting them in paying the families of suicide bombers, and in 2003 he was arrested in an undercover FBI operation in Germany. He was convicted and sentenced to 75 years in prison, but he was allowed to walk free because the prosecution used testimonies about Hamas' acts of terrorism, which was technically not the main issue. al-Moayad was greeted by thousands of supporters on his return to Yemen, and President Ali Abdullah Saleh congratulated him.